


Like Veal

by st_mick



Series: Niffler [55]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Torchwood
Genre: Episode: s01e06 Countrycide, Ianto may still be the tiniest bit suicidal, Jack saves the day, Stream of Consciousness, torture/beating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 15:37:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21376474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_mick/pseuds/st_mick
Summary: “Once you’re completely bled, you’ll be ready to be butchered.” Ewan ran a hand down Ianto’s face and neck. “I just know you’ll be tasty.”
Series: Niffler [55]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1276304
Comments: 28
Kudos: 63





	Like Veal

Ianto came around fairly quickly, silently cursing his hard head. He tried not to groan as he looked around. The boy was just lying there, clearly in shock from the terror. Ianto closed his eyes as he heard voices drawing nearer. He tried to mentally brace himself for what was to come.

“You all right, Helen?”

“I’m fine. Bastard bloodied Ewan, though.” She gave Ianto a kick, and it was all he could do to refrain from crying out.

“Well, we’ll just have to return the favor then, won’t we?”

Rough hands seized Ianto, and soon enough he was stood in front of the group. Helen was taking no chances, she had the shotgun trained on him again. But it was all for show. She wouldn’t chance the blast hitting her friends, even at this close range. Ianto quickly took stock of his situation. With a man holding each arm and two more facing him with assessing looks, he knew his chances of even fighting them off were slim.

“Oh, look at ‘im,” one of them cooed. “You think Ewan would let me ‘ave ‘im, afore we get started?” He reached out and traced a hand down Ianto’s cheek, then kept going, his hand trailing further down.

Ianto let him, for the moment, knowing the bastard would draw closer to cop a better feel. When he stepped near enough, Ianto brought his knee up, hard enough to lodge the fucker’s nuts in his nostrils.

“Elis!” they shouted, then turned to begin punching Ianto, who began cursing them - mostly in the muggle sense, but some actual curses must have leaked out, because they began looking nervous. Must be a superstitious lot.

Good.

As Elis vomited on the floor, they gagged Ianto and managed with some difficulty to tie his ankles together. Then they unlocked the cuffs, binding his wrists in front of him with rope. He tried to fight them, and even gave an elbow to one and punched another before they subdued him with another punch to the gut.

Something already felt a bit wrong, there. He wondered what damage they had done, so far. This thought was overridden as they attached the rope around his wrists to one of the meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. His feet were still on the floor, and that was the only thing that allowed him to brace himself against the blows that began raining down.

“Not too rough,” Helen called out. “The meat is sweeter if the bones don’t break.”

“He’s a skinny one. Meat’ll be stringy if we’re not thorough.”

“Do what you can, Ewan’ll take the bat to any spots you miss, when he returns.”

The three men had at him for what seemed like a very long time, beating him indiscriminately all along his torso, front, back, and sides. Ianto screamed through the gag, but in his defiance he continued to curse them, as well. It freaked them out that he was still talking, through the gag, despite their blows.

Can’t blame a guy for getting his payback, where he can.

But the blows kept falling, and eventually he retreated from the pain, going deep into his mind and praying to all that was sacred and holy that Toshiko had escaped. That she found Jack and the others. That they would put a stop to the slaughter of innocents.

He was certain they would not arrive in time for him, but that was okay, as long as Tosh was safe. After all, he wasn’t all that innocent. Perhaps this was a penance, of sorts, that his next life wouldn’t be spent as a grub worm.

After what seemed like a very long time (but may have only been minutes), they stopped. Ianto was confident that they had been quite thorough. As he caught his breath, he felt rather pleased that Elis was still writhing on the floor, whimpering more than him.

Only fair, though. If Elis got to grab Ianto’s knackers, then Ianto got to knee Elis in his. He was confident that Elis would ultimately end up with them, as a trophy, but that was better than what the cannibal had originally been hoping for.

He really hoped Elis didn’t end up with his knackers in a jar, though. That’d just be adding insult to injury.

He was _so_ going to fucking haunt Kingsley, if his balls ended up in a jar.

He vaguely wondered if Jack would be able to see him, as a ghost.

He was jolted from his meandering stream of consciousness when he was pulled from the meat hook and tossed to the floor in the corner, with a sack over his head. It took several minutes for the world to stop spinning and for the pain to subside enough for him to hold two coherent thoughts together.

He was surprised he wasn’t more afraid. Given how he’d behaved in the cellar, he wondered what had happened to the panic. He didn’t miss it, of course. Perhaps this was how it felt, to surrender to one’s fate.

No more fear.

Plenty of pain, though. Bloody hell, but they’d given him a good going over. Better than the homophobic hoodlums from the beach, even if they hadn’t broken any bones, as yet. He had a feeling his ribs were bruised, and at least one of them felt cracked. Guess they were careful after all; wouldn’t want to not be as tasty…

He drifted for a while in a haze of slightly delirious pain and regret, trying not to think too closely about how easy it had been to surrender to this fate.

When he was alert enough, he focused on breathing so he wouldn’t vomit and choke on it. If he was going to die, he was resolved that it wouldn’t be that way. And he prayed. He begged Brigid to help him find his magic, to feel it one last time. But it was still hidden from when he had driven it so deep within, that awful night with the cyber-woman. Having his wand and using magic for the wards and binding the Fae had helped it come back a bit, but it wasn’t back fully enough that he could feel it, without his wand.

He had gone from praising Brigid to cursing Kingsley and the Ministry once more, when he heard voices. But they were so far away, and he really couldn’t be arsed to come back to full consciousness. Not while they had left him in relative peace, for a few moments. One voice almost roused him, though.

“Where’s Ianto? What have you done with him?”

Damn.

Couldn’t even save Tosh, properly.

_Damn_.

He was seized once more and pulled to his knees. The bag was ripped from his head. He heard someone exclaim at the sight of him. But something was odd, because the change in light hardly affected him. He realized he still wasn’t entirely conscious.

How strange.

“Wake up, man.” He felt a smack to his face.

Well, that was just rude. His eyes opened, but it took a moment to focus enough to realize that they’d caught Owen and Gwen, as well. The bastard cannibal was holding him up by his nose, it felt like. The man’s hand on his face was a strange sort of violation; in its way almost as bad as Elis’ groping.

“He hurt Elis. It was all I could do, to keep the lads in line. They’ve softened him up for you, though.” That was Helen, sounding smug. Ianto didn’t generally hold with violence towards women, but he felt he could see his way clear to popping her one, should the opportunity arise.

“Hang him up, lads,” Ewan said, his voice cheerful. Once he was hanging by his bound wrists again, Ianto tried to turn away from the man’s rancid breath when he stepped up to him and smacked him again. “Now let’s see how well the lads did, shall we?”

He pulled out the machete he had chased Toshiko with and soon Ianto’s clothes were shredded on the ground at his feet. Suddenly he was standing there in his altogether, and it wasn’t nearly as fun or funny as it had been at Imbolc.

Despite how blurry they had become, he locked eyes with each of his teammates (were they finally a team, now?), and the defiance still burning in his eyes gave each of them the strength to face what was to come. He could see Owen looking at him, trying to assess the damage he was seeing. Gwen only returned his stare for a moment before hers became entirely too focused on his southerly climes, and Tosh held his gaze with an intensity he hadn’t noticed from her, before.

He began cursing their captors through the gag again as they all surveyed their handiwork.

“He won’t shut up, with the cursing,” one of them groused.

“Let him curse,” Ewan replied as he pressed his hand against various parts of Ianto’s torso.

Ianto groaned around the words as he continued to call down every curse he could think of. He was fairly certain he was just one big bruise, now. 

“Not bad, lads,” Ewan said. “But you missed a few spots, I see.” He frowned and reached down, tracing Ianto’s scars with a blunt finger. “I see we’re not the first to come at you,” he said, pressing into the scars.

Ianto tried to jerk away from the man’s touch, groaning through another curse. Ewan grinned and punched Ianto at the center of where the scars on his abdomen were concentrated.

Ianto cried out, this time, closing his eyes against the explosion of pain from where the Dittany had run out during the Battle of Hogwarts, leaving the injuries caused by the _Sectumsempra_ curse to heal the slow way. Except it felt as though they never really had. Not fully. The scars never _didn’t_ pain him, but having Ewan deliberately abuse them was agony.

After a moment, Ewan left the scars alone. He took the bat from one of his neighbors and propped it on his shoulder as he circled Ianto. The younger man fought to catch his breath and feigned disinterest, other than to watch for how and when to brace himself.

He knew what the bat meant.

He only hoped it wouldn’t hurt as much as the tire iron had.

The first blow was across his chest, and now the hidden scars were screaming, as well. Several more blows followed. Ianto grunted through the gag and resumed his litany of curses. He kept breathing, continuing to focus on not vomiting and reacting as little as possible to these sadists. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction, though he could not stifle his cries as the pain compounded.

Ewan worked him over with the bat for a good quarter hour, focusing on his back, buttocks, and thighs. Every now and again the end of the bat would strike the scars showing on his belly or thighs, just to make him scream a little louder.

When Ewan was finally satisfied, he signaled to the others. Helen and the other woman had been clearing off the butcher block, then covering it with the long lengths of heavy plastic sheeting. The men pulled Ianto down and tossed him on top of the plastic. He was shivering, and could tell he was going into shock.

“Yeah,” Ewan said, deciding to give some instruction to the rest of Torchwood, enjoying having an audience. “Time to be bled. Like veal. Takes a long time, but it definitely makes the meat taste better.” He grinned, and they started wrapping Ianto’s body, first with the plastic, then with rope to secure it.

Ianto’s pain was the only thing that kept him from panicking over being bound and immobilized.

“Once you’re completely bled, you’ll be ready to be butchered.” Ewan ran a hand down Ianto’s face and neck. “I just know you’ll be tasty.” He leaned down and licked Ianto, from his collarbone up to his temple.

Ianto head butted him again. It was just a glancing blow, but the bloody bastard fucking _licked_ him!

Ianto got another smack for his troubles, and then a bloody huge meat cleaver was at his throat. He held still, but did not cower from the blade. “Just a tiny cut. Want to be sure you bleed out slowly,” Ewan crooned at him.

Ianto barely felt it, but the trickle of blood told him the deed was done. Ewan folded the top of the plastic sheeting over Ianto’s face, then tucked it into one of the ropes. He made sure to leave plenty of gaps, for breathing. The meat tasted so much better if it completely bled out – wouldn’t do to have it suffocate, first.

“Hang him back up, boys.”

Once Ianto was hanging by the ropes binding his ankles, Helen put a bowl under his head to catch the blood – doubtless for some kind of pudding. Ianto focused on his breathing and tried not to struggle. He knew that would only accelerate the blood loss.

Part of him wanted to just fully surrender to the inevitable, but he was still bloody-minded enough to not want to give Ewan and Helen and the gang the satisfaction. So he wouldn’t surrender, just yet. Death would come, soon enough. But in the meantime, the pain was getting to him. Being hung upside down was the worst possible thing for the blinding headache caused by so many blows to the head. And the ropes binding him were too tight on his injured body.

But it would do no good to focus on that…

No, that would only serve to make him panic, again. He’d think about Jack, instead. He wished he hadn’t been such a coward. He should have told Jack what was wrong. But he didn’t, and he’d hurt Jack. Again.

If he had it to do over again, he’d indulge his curiosity. He’d kiss the beautiful idiot. Even if Jack rejected him for his shortcomings afterwards, it couldn’t feel any worse than the loneliness of avoiding Jack.

He’d been such a fool.

Ah, pain and regret: a familiar refrain…

***

Ewan clapped his hands and looked around. “So… who’s next?”

The team’s shock and horror kept them quiet and subdued as they watched their teammate’s blood drip slowly into the bowl. Slowly, but also far too swiftly.

The villagers spent the next few minutes tying the boy up properly, and gagging him to stop his terrified cries. They hung him up by his wrists on a hook and were about to start beating him when the ground began to shake. The next moments were harrowing as a tractor came through the wall and Jack followed with a shotgun and a fury that was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.

Owen untied Toshiko as Jack shot the place up. Then he was on his feet. “Jack! Help me!”

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked. He looked around. “Where’s Ianto?”

Owen did not answer as he carefully nudged aside the bowl, taking note of how much blood was in there, and began lifting on the body. But his hands were still cuffed together, so he was having trouble getting a good hold on it. Tosh ran over to help. Gwen was untying the boy.

“Gwen, find the keys to these bloody cuffs, you daft bint!” Owen gritted.

She shot him a cross look and went to the constable, looking for the key.

Between them, Jack, Tosh, and Owen got the body down and carried it over to the butcher block. Owen pulled back the plastic covering their teammate’s face, and Jack gasped in horror. Ianto was conscious, but his eyes were glassy and staring.

“Ianto,” Jack took the younger man’s face in his hands for a moment before carefully pulling the gag from his mouth. “We’ve got you, Ianto. It’s over, now. You’re safe.” Ianto closed his eyes and turned his head into Jack’s touch.

Jack watched as Owen pulled the plastic away from Ianto’s body and was horrified by the evidence of the beating he had taken. He looked back at Ianto, his eyes full of sorrow and regret. “I came as soon as I could. I…”

“Jack, you got a clean handkerchief?” Owen asked, trying to short-circuit Jack’s guilt, which was doing Ianto no favors. Jack reached into one of the inside pockets of his greatcoat and pulled out a fresh handkerchief. “I need my kit,” Owen took the fabric and held it to Ianto’s neck.

“I brought it,” Jack rushed over to the tractor, where he’d stuffed Owen’s kit behind the seat.

Owen quickly used a solution to patch Ianto’s punctured jugular vein. It would heal well, as long as he could patch the cut to the skin and keep it from getting infected. He cleaned the injury as best he could and used a gadget that looked very much like a stapler (that’s pretty much what it was) to put three temporary stitches into the skin.

“There you go, Tea Boy. I’ll get those out once we get back to the hub and put some nice, neat stitches in, and you won’t even have a scar.” He looked Ianto over, and Jack took off his greatcoat to drape over his shivering form. “Tell me how bad the pain is.” He was concerned that Ianto wasn’t talking, but then he realized that it actually seemed pretty normal.

Ianto closed his eyes and shook his head, either unable or unwilling to speak.

“Ianto, I need to know so we can get out ahead of the pain, or it’ll slow down your healing. Now give me a number, one to ten.”

Ianto didn’t think he was badly injured, but the pain was astonishing. He wondered if he could manage to summon Draco. He felt a bit faint. “Dizzy,” he muttered, his voice raw from screaming.

“Yeah, you lost about a liter of blood. That, combined with…” He looked at Ianto’s head. “Blimey, Ianto, how many blows to the head have you taken?”

Ianto closed his eyes and tried to count. “Two?”

Tosh looked at him as she began to mop the blood from where it had run from his neck, up the side of his face, and through his hair to drip into the basin. “Ianto, count with me. They stunned you when they grabbed you, yes?” At his nod, she continued. “Then you head butted Ewan. Twice, but the second time wasn’t much of an impact.” She reached out and touched his cheek, darkened with the imprint of the butt of Helen’s shotgun.

“Oh,” Ianto frowned. “Wasn’t counting the head butts or punches.”

“Give me a number, Tea Boy.”

“Six?”

Owen raised an eyebrow. The damage he was seeing added up to more than a six. He sighed. “Ianto. Please, you can lie to me all you want, when we get back to the hub. But for right now, please tell me the truth. Let me help you, mate.”

“I don’t know.” A tear fell down the side of Ianto’s face. “Eight, maybe?”

Owen nodded. That’s what he would have guessed.

“Not trying to lie. Never know how to answer that, is all.”

Owen frowned at the implication that Ianto had to answer that question more often than suspected. He shook his head. “I get it. It’s tough, particularly for people who have a high tolerance for pain, or who’ve…” he trailed off, and looked up at Jack, who frowned. He shook his head. “Let’s see if we can get you more comfortable.” He found a phial of alien painkiller and quickly injected Ianto.

“Can you find my things and help me get out of here?” he asked quietly. “Please? The smell is getting to me.”

Something about the plaintive tone of Ianto’s plea broke Jack. He drew his gun and whirled around. He grabbed Ewan and shoved the barrel under the man’s throat.

“No, Jack. Don’t do it!” Gwen had him by the arm.

“These people don’t deserve warnings.”

“Let me question him. I have to understand. I want to know why. Otherwise, this? This is too much.”

“Gwen, there’s nothing to understand. They’re crazy. You try to understand that, you’ll lose something of yourself.”

“But Jack…”

“No, Gwen. Leave it.”

“But…”

Jack turned and looked at her, his face stony. “You have your orders, Cooper,” he gritted. “Go phone the police. Tell them to bring everything they have – detectives, SOCO, and as many ambulances as they can spare.

She looked like she wanted to continue arguing, but grudgingly nodded and left the room.

Jack turned to Tosh and Owen. “Tosh, are you up to helping Owen stop the suspects’ bleeding?”

She nodded, but she looked reluctant to leave Ianto.

He stepped next to her and gave her a gentle hug. “I’ve got him.”

She and Owen moved away. Jack sat Ianto up and then helped him into the greatcoat. He saw Ianto trying to hide his pain, but realized that sitting must be excruciating. They’d worked Ianto over quite thoroughly, and Jack was convinced that there would be no comfortable way for the younger man to sit or lie until the bruises began to heal.

He helped Ianto to stand up from the table. His knees almost buckled, but he turned and caught himself, leaning with his hands braced against the table and breathing heavily. Jack didn’t know where to touch him, to support him. Ianto was so covered in bruises, there was no safe place to touch, except maybe his forearms. He took Ianto’s elbow and tried not to apply any pressure, because hanging from his bound wrists had caused a great deal of soreness in his shoulders, as well.

Ianto turned back around, facing the back wall rather than those who had hurt him. He leaned back on his hands as Jack buttoned up the coat for him. “Looks good on you,” he smiled, reaching out and touching an unbruised portion of Ianto’s cheek.

“Looks better on you, Sir,” Ianto replied.

“You ready to get out of here?”

“I’d like my things, please.”

“Things?”

“When they took me, they cleaned out my pockets – a stopwatch, a coin, and my wallet.”

Jack looked around and found Ianto’s belongings on one of the shelves where they had been placed when he was first captured. He dropped the three items into the pocket of the greatcoat and led Ianto from the room.

“You would have been tasty, meat,” Ewan called mockingly after them.

Ianto stopped. He turned away from Jack and walked towards Ewan, looking surprisingly steady on his feet. When he began speaking, his voice was strong and unwavering. “See, the thing about Torchwood is, we’ve got an in with every other government agency. You will all go to different facilities, I’ll make sure of that. Isolation, if I can pull it off. And I probably can. And I’ll also flag every record with the appropriate health diagnoses, and you’ll only be fed a vegetarian diet.”

Owen laughed loudly. “See what you get for fucking with the admin?”

Ewan glared at Ianto. “I’ll see you again, meat.”

Ianto felt a shiver of power rise from the earth, and he fought back any snarky commentary about it being better late than never. Actually, he felt immensely grateful for the gift. He raised himself up and stared down at the sadistic killer. “Pray that you don’t,” he smiled an unfriendly smile, and the room seemed to crackle with power.

Everyone shivered and wondered where the static electricity crackling in the air was coming from. Ewan saw, though. He could see it sparking in the eyes of the man whose life he’d almost taken, this night. “What the fuck are you?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Best you don’t find out,” Ianto growled, then turned and walked from the room.

“That was seriously hot,” Jack said as they strode outside. “Hey,” he stopped outside of the door as Ianto leaned heavily against him, all of a sudden. “You all right?”

Ianto wrapped his arms round Jack in a clumsy embrace. He buried his face in Jack’s neck, breathing in his scent and trying to ground himself. “Thank you for finding them in time, Jack,” Ianto whispered into Jack’s neck. “I tried to buy you enough time, so you could find them. So you could save them. Thank you.”

***

**Author's Note:**

> Some dialogue lifted from series episode "Countrycide".
> 
> Not sure why, but I'm being a bit passive aggressive towards Gwen...
> 
> Well, okay. I guess I do know why. :D Let me know if it gets out of hand.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
